Instacube, the Digital Photo Frame for Instagram

Instaprint took Instagram old school, offering Polaroid-like prints from your feed. Instacube brings it back into the digital age, displaying your feed in real time on an updated digital photo frame.

Created by Design to Matter and launched today on Kickstarter, it’s got all the basics — wireless, touchscreen, flash memory — packaged up to look like the app. In fact, the package is a big part of the attraction. If digital photo frames seem like they’re not “in” anymore, it may be because so many are unattractive with a poor user interface. Instacube aims to change that with a slick, straight-from-Instagram interface and a stylish box.

Of course, the update comes at a price — $100 for the first 1,000 backers, and $150 for the rest. What you get is a display that matches the 600-square-pixels size of Instagram photos and toggles through different feeds, based on friends or hashtags. The frame runs an Android operating system, so developers will be able to play around with it too.

In just a few hours, Instacube has surpassed 30 percent of their $250,000 goal, a result that wasn’t completely unexpected, says John Whaley, Design to Matter’s head of industrial design. The firm polled their community and social networks to gauge excitement, and found it.

Many ultra-successful Kickstarter projects have trouble fulfilling their promises in response to overnight success and high expectations. Instacube isn’t in that position yet, but they’ll have no problem if they reach it, says Whaley. The company already offers services throughout design, engineering, and production, including an office in Hong Kong to help source supplies and manufacturing.

“This is why we wanted to do a project on Kickstarter, since we have all of these disciplines in house,” says Whaley. “We really believe we’re the perfect team to do this kind of project, because we can execute.”

But first, they have to reach their goal.

“We’re still kind of crossing our fingers and refreshing the campaign every 30 seconds to see the numbers,” Whaley says.Do they know it’s not a cube? Photo: Courtesy of Design to Matter